


Tatemae, Honne

by PassonovsParagraphs



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Agender Character, Background Relationships, But not a lot of misgendering more like discussion of it, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Misgendering, Team as Family, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-16 08:11:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10567209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PassonovsParagraphs/pseuds/PassonovsParagraphs
Summary: It was so important, Aunt Cass knew, for girls like Hiro to have supportive friends, and she breathed a sigh of relief knowing her niece did.A series of one-shots, not all chronologically ordered, about trans girl Hiro, her dorky and supportive friends, the hardships she faces sometimes, and the ways all the people in her life show they care.





	1. It's A Start

* * *

 

“Thanks for doing this,” Hiro said for roughly the hundredth time that day, curling into a small ball on the couch. “I, um, I know this is probably weird for you."

Honey waved a hand dismissively, smiling kindly at her younger friend. “Don’t worry about it! I’ve been thinking about what color palettes would work best for you, and Fred’s already said he’ll deal with the cost.”

“Yeah,” Fred declared, mellow as always, lounging on the sofa inbetween them like he was perpetually exhausted. “Honey totally helped me out when I came out, you know? I was a wreck, just ask Heathcliff. So it’s like, I wanna pay that forward. Besides, one thing I know from superhero comics is that you can totally correct the public by adding a skirt to your hero getup. That’s easy. But rebuying everything’s a major bummer. You definitely need reinforcements for that.”

Reinforcements, in this case, meant Honey and Fred. Wasabi was at a Star Trek convention and Gogo was spending a week with her family, celebrating her brother’s birthday. Aunt Cass had offered to help, but Hiro would’ve felt guilty hauling her away from her work like that – and besides, Baymax was adorable and was bringing in a lot of customers as a huggable service bot. They’d all pitched in, though, in their own ways. Gogo’s parents had gotten Hiro neon pink sneakers with purple lightning bolts on them that were a size too big. She’d handed them over to Hiro with a shrug, saying ‘hey, they fit _your_ feet’. Wasabi had given Hiro his sister’s old collection of barrettes and hair bows, which was mammoth but organized by color and size in a travel case, as was the black boy’s way. It had taken Hiro a long time to admit to the team Baymax using female pronouns for Tadashi’s younger ‘brother’ wasn’t an error, that she was a trans girl and only Tadashi had ever known.

She’d expected them to be grossed out. She didn’t know why – these were her friends, they were in their twenties, and this was a liberal city, but she had still been terrified. She’d felt the same overheated-yet-chilled feeling waiting for their response as she had when she got into trouble botfighting, waiting for the ground to drop out from under her, not knowing what came next. She was so tired of lying she just had to be honest, she couldn’t take it anymore, and yet that it was necessary didn’t make it easy. The feeling of being the center of attention at the Expo was nothing compared to that moment. Baymax started to say something about elevated heart rates.

Then Fred blurted out, “It’s cool, I’m like an inverse-you and everyone’s cool with it. Wait, did you not know I’m a transdude?” Gogo had yanked Hiro in for an abrupt, protective hug, the second one she’d ever seen the Korean girl give anyone; in that moment Hiro knew Gogo was on her side even if she wasn’t sure how to say it. Wasabi muttered an embarrassed apology for calling Hiro ‘little man’ before, looking kind of guilty for the mistake. Honey pulled out her phone and started hammering away at it, fingers a flurry of motion.

“We’re going to get you some clothes you like,” she announced, shrugging as Hiro opened her mouth to protest how that was way too expensive. “Hiro, I’ve seen you when we go out. You’re always looking at dresses – and now, you can have some. I did that for Fred back in the day. And I know Tadashi would’ve wanted me to do it for you, too. Every girl deserves a nice dress!”

Hiro had needed them to be her back up for coming out to Aunt Cass out of sheer nervousness, though there she felt more guilt for not having come out sooner. She’d been planning it, but Tadashi’s death had been too much to deal with. Hiro had postponed it until she could talk about her brother without feeling like her heart was ripped out of her chest. Smiling gently, Aunt Cass scooped her niece up in her arms lovingly, like the mother Hiro couldn’t remember, before a long, overly-terrified lecture on the things college guys might try to pull on an underage college girl and how she needed to be careful out there. Before they left the house, the entire team had been sworn to protecting Hiro no matter what, given fresh-baked cinnamon rolls and subjected to individual hugs. It was so important, Aunt Cass knew, for girls like Hiro to have supportive friends, and she breathed a sigh of relief knowing her niece did.

As terrified as Hiro had been about the entire coming out thing, she slept better that night than she had since Tadashi died. Baymax informed her of that when she woke up. Her REM sleep was flawless, she had actually met her nightly required hours for once, and her serotonin levels were well balanced. Baymax had no problem adjusting his programming to call her by the right pronouns back when she first activated him after Tadashi died; it took a few seconds of readjusting programming, and that was that. (Had Tadashi installed that? Had he hoped one day she’d come out, and wanted to make sure she had his robot’s support? It made her wish he was there so she could call him a sentimental dork.) The next steps in this whole thing that she really wanted to do were getting a less-masculine name and clothes she didn’t feel like she had to endure just to pass as a ‘normal guy’. Baggy pants and hoodies were a shield she hid behind to try to make sure nobody caught on she was a girl, but if she was brave enough to go fight Callaghan riding atop a giant robot, then she was brave enough to pick out a skirt. It couldn’t be that hard.

Except it was, actually. She wasn’t sure what sounded like a more awful experience, a cheap thrift store where people would be staring and nothing would probably be in her size, or a more expensive store with more people staring where she would maybe find something that worked. She knew she still looked boyish, even with her hair growing out. All that attention sounded like it was way too much to handle right now. Ordering things online would’ve been easy in her botfighting days, she knew that. She also knew Tadashi would become a ghost just to haunt her if she tried going back to botfighting to get money for that kind of thing. The next option was Fred, who called in Honey, and then they were curled up in front of his computer, trying to make sense of the mess that was the world of online shopping, with its’ seemingly endless list of sites and styles and fabrics and her head was spinning already just thinking about it.

“Did it suck this much for you?” she asked Fred, expecting a ‘no’ since he was the least stylish man, trans or otherwise, she’d ever met.

“Yep. Don’t worry, it totally sucks less the more you get used to it.” He patted her head like she was a little sister to him, affectionate if overly chill. “I used to be afraid to wear colors because I thought they showed my curves.”

She raised an eyebrow at that, confused. “You don’t _have_ any curves.”

He nodded grimly (well, as grimly as _Fred_ could do anything). “That’s what I mean about it sucking. But Honey makes it suck way less. She’s like a queer guardian angel.”

Honey just giggled amicably at that, clearly not offended in the least. To be honest, while Hiro would never wear a lot of Honey’s outfits, she admired how the Latina girl just did whatever she wanted when it came to clothes, baking, science, superheroics, and everything else in life. And though Hiro would never say it, Honey was sort of how she’d imagined having a mother might have been like, guiding, gentle with a hidden stern side, patient enough to help her through this weirdness. Hiro was great at robotics, strategy, computers, technology production and invention – not clothes or make up or any of the things she cooed over in secret without ever daring to buy. She couldn’t remember much of her mother so she wasn’t sure if it was genetic. The pictures Aunt Cass had shown her showed Hiro’s mother mostly dressed plainly and in labcoats at work. And everybody looked like crap at work except superheroes.

“I think I’m gonna add a skirt to my superhero outfit,” Hiro mused, thinking about heat-resistant fiber with enough trace metals to be magnetized to Baymax. “Not anything like the metal bow in Fred’s comics, though. I’m not _ten_.”

“Bows really would make you look younger,” Honey replied thoughtfully. “That’s not bad though, when you’re _not_ being a superhero. You have years ahead of you to wear mom jeans and V-necks, you can live it up in college.”

“Like the girl in Astronomy 104 who wears tulle tutus and armwarmers all the time?” the younger girl asked with mounting horror. “Nope, not happening. Is there a middle ground between boring and… and… _tha_ t?”

Honey bent over Fred’s laptop, opening up three tabs and typing in corresponding websites with speed that rivaled Baymax’s. She turned, watching Hiro’s face slowly light up. It was the same expression she’d seen on Fred back when he went by Francesca; that moment of realizing ‘oh, that person looks like me’ and ‘oh, I could actually wear that, huh?’ It was the moment where at least one thing, even if it was just clothes, seemed possible, and every small step was important, especially if it made her friends even the smallest bit happier with themselves and with the world.

“I hadn’t considered J-fashion,” Hiro muttered, looking like doors had just opened for her in her mind.

She snapped a picture of Hiro while the younger girl was still gazing at the screen smiling, a timid, hopeful smile that made Fred and Honey’s spirits soar.


	2. I Need A Book

* * *

Wasabi stared down the book store aisle, brow furrowed.

People told him all the time he didn’t look like a bookworm, and he wasn’t, really, but books had helped him out a lot in managing his OCD, supplementing his scientific learning and bolstering his love of Star Trek. Usually, if he was at a bookstore, he was there to pick up a Star Trek expanded universe book, since they were a good way to unwind when he was stressed out over school work. Sometimes he picked up a cooking book for Honey or a motorcycle magazine for Gogo. Today’s trip, however, was focused on Hiro, which was unfamiliar territory entirely – as was the aisle he was in, which admittedly he should’ve browsed through before.

Fred came out as a trans man (transdude, in his own words) at the start of his freshman year in college, before Wasabi met him through Tadashi. Wasabi had always known him as Fred, not Francesca, so he managed to avoid the mistakes he was making with Hiro. He knew Hiro seemed to have forgiven him for calling her ‘little man’ as a nickname before he knew, yet he still felt kind of bad about it. One thing he was very sure of was that he didn’t want to make any more stupid mistakes. She was fourteen, the same age as Wasabi’s sister back home, and he knew fourteen was a sucky year for most girls (and most guys, honestly) as it was. Lacking resources, the black nerd had decided that when in doubt, a book was probably his best bet. He’d walked by the LGBT section of the bookstore on his way to the back where they kept the sci-fi many times, so he knew where it was.

He just didn’t know what he was looking for. Should he get a book written by a trans person about coming out, so he would know what Hiro was going through? What if that wasn’t accurate since those books were written by adults and she was a teenager? Would the books on trans history help or was that stuff that didn’t apply? He stared at the book shelves intently, berating himself for not reading into this more when Fred had mentioned to him that he was trans. Fred was so chill, though, so at ease with the world, that if Wasabi had ever said anything wrong to him, he hadn’t mentioned it or gotten upset. Very few people had Fred’s insane level of ‘eh, whatever’ when it came to this.

“Excuse me,” a voice said, breaking him out of his thoughts. “I need to get by – oh, I know you.”

Blinking, Wasabi turned and found himself looking at Krei’s assistant. He could not, for the life of him, recall the personal-assistant-slash-public-relations-manger’s name, but he stepped aside with a nervous smile. “Sorry. I, uh, zoned out for a bit, there.”

Krei’s assistant looked at the shelves he’d been staring at, then back to him. He tensed, but the look he got was soft, even kind. “I noticed a certain superheroine’s taken to wearing skirts lately.” The voice was just above a murmur, in case someone should overhear.

“Yeah,” he nodded, sighing. “And I’m, I guess you could say I’m learning about this sort of thing? Or I want to learn, at least.” How many times had he compared Hiro to her brother? Was that the sort of thing that was upsetting to a girl trying to get people to see her as one? He kind of felt awful now that he knew.

A quick scanning of the shelves, and then, pulling books out with ease, “Here, those two books should help. This author’s good; I read their textbooks when I was in college taking Gender Studies.”

He breathed a sigh of relief, gladly accepting the books. “Awesome, thanks. Would it make me a jerk if I asked your name, and if I should be calling you by certain pronouns? I did a lot of reading online and it’s totally disorganized.”

“Humans are always disorganized,” they replied sagely. “I prefer they/them, but Mr. Krei sometimes slips up and calls me she or her. And my name is Ntxhi Muas.” They held out a hand for Wasabi to shake, which he took with a small smile.

“Nice to meet you, sorry I can’t say your first name to save my life,” he apologized, getting a chuckle out of the agender assistant as they stepped aside to pick through the small section of books regarding transgender topics, clearly invested now in the search.

They shrugged lightly. “I’m Hmong, I’m used to people not knowing how to speak my language. Hmm, this book might be worth getting,” they mused, plucking a small book out. “Unless she’s already found a new name, of course.”

Panic struck Wasabi immediately. “Oh, man – what if I call her the wrong name? I guess I could start calling her Hamada but that’d be so weird, and should I even say ‘oh man’ around her? What if-”

“Breathe, Wasabi.” Ntxhi placed a hand on his shoulder. He was struck by how sad their eyes were, behind the glasses. “Most people don’t put in the effort you do. So long as you make sure she knows you’re still her friend, that you still think of her as who she is, that’s really all she needs. You may make mistakes, but you’re trying. A lot of people never bother with that. Or they tell you it’s a phase, or that who you are isn’t a thing that exists, or that you’re insane.”

He swallowed, suddenly feeling as if he were privy to a glimpse into the Hmong person’s past, one that made his stomach churn. While Ntxhi handled Big Hero 6’s public relations through Krei Tech, they kept their distance, often staying nearly silent for entire meetings. He’d wondered why, since they hadn’t seemed standoffish at the Expo. Now he knew why the Hmong lady - person, he corrected himself forcibly - stayed in the background. Was this the same reason Hiro ducked out of some hang out nights? Was that why she was still afraid to wear dresses and skirts in public, even though she’d started buying them? Was this why Hiro sat in the back of every class, only speaking when called on directly? Why hadn't Hiro ever said anything about all this? Had someone bullied her? He didn't know, and he didn't know how to fix it if the answer was yes like it clearly was for the person in from of him.

Before he could say anything, Ntxhi turned and walked away, smiling sadly as they shoved their hands into the pockets of their coat. “Just treat her like a person, okay? That’s all anybody really wants.”

Wasabi stood there silently and wondered why treating people like people was something that needed to be _requested_.


	3. What's In A Name (Part One)

Hiro knew the internet was a dark place sometimes, but she hadn’t known the extent of human cruelty until she looked at baby name websites. 

The question she kept wanting to ask, again and again, was _why_. Jennifer spelled Ghenypher, Madison spelled Maedesynne, and a whopping one hundred and thirty four spelling of the name Caitlin all stared up at her from the computer screen, testaments to the twisted nature of modern people. All she had wanted was a cool name! She hadn’t gone looking for this level of… she trailed off mentally, not having a word for it. This was the polar opposite of cool. It was to cool what antimatter was to matter, and she wanted no part of whatever forums and sites these people hung out on. Unfortunately they seemed to have infiltrated most of the internet, so, shuddering at the memory of a particularly bad spelling of Vanessa that would haunt her nightmares tonight, she left her room to get something to eat and hopefully clear her head.

Aunt Cass was making chicken; anyone with a nose could smell the spice she put into her hotwings a mile away. Hiro’s stomach growled, making her Aunt turn around and smile at her. “These’ll be ready in a few minutes, sweetie. How was college today?”

Hiro shrugged, plopping down at the table. “My Scientific Ethics professor liked my paper, but we’re not sure about the viability of citing Baymax as a source since he’s technically, legally, not a person. He’ll get back to me on that.” Yawning, she stretched, trying to think of a casual way to bring up what she wanted to ask. “Aunt Cass? What were my parents going to name me if they’d known they were having a girl? Or if Tadashi had been a girl, like, what names were they gonna use?”

Asking about her parents was always awkward. There was a lot of grief still there, even all these years later. Hiro had learned grief didn’t really go away, it just changed form into something else. With Baymax’s help she’d processed Tadashi’s death, but now, she understood why her Aunt locked up when the topic was broached, why she got sad or wistful when the nerd herd was talking about science the way her sister and brother-in-law had. Sometimes Hiro still couldn’t look directly over at Tadashi’s half of their room. Their family had holes in it where people they loved used to be. She watched Aunt Cass take the chicken out of the oven, face uncharacteristically down for a moment.

“Your mother wanted a girl,” she started, sounding faintly amused and mostly sad. “She and I were so close growing up, I think she wanted to have daughters who were the same. You and Tadashi were close right from the beginning, of course, so she realized it wasn’t about being girls, but… she had lists of girls’ names. She loved to plan things out, whether it was in the lab or at home. Your poor father got used to her texting him at work to ask what he thought of things. I did, too. I’d be in the middle of baking and get a text saying ‘do you think Himeko Hamada sounds cheesy’ or ‘I know Ai is overplayed, but what about Aika?’ and even if she settled on one, it didn’t last. She wasn’t any better when the ultrasound confirmed Tadashi was a boy, and she wasn’t any different with you.” She started putting food on their plates, looking a million miles away.

“So Mom wanted to give us Japanese names no matter what, even if we’d both been girls?” Hiro asked, thinking back to her futile internet endeavors. She hadn’t looked at Japanese names specifically, just whatever Google turned up first in terms of websites.

Cass chuckled, a gleam in her eyes. “Your parents were so cute. Your father didn’t want her to feel like he expected her to be an expert on Japan or anything, so he suggested English names, especially from my side of the family. Meanwhile your mother was on the war path about how people shouldn’t have to take on English names to be taken seriously in America these days, so she wouldn’t hear a word of it.”

She smiled, thinking of her parents. Even though she mostly didn’t remember them, she remembered her mother was always in motion, talking with her hands, expressive and unapologetic. To a young Hiro, it had seemed the world stopped to listen to her Mommy. Her father was more like Tadashi, from what little home video they had. He was snarky, witty, soft spoken and looked at her mother like she’d hung the moon and arranged the stars. She couldn’t imagine them butting heads on something without her mother winning the argument, which explained why she and Tadashi were named what they were. It might have been where their iron will came from, too, at least in part.

“You know,” her aunt interrupted her thoughts, setting the food down and taking a seat next to her, “I have some of your mother’s old notebooks. One of them had some name ideas in it. I’ll see if I can find it for you after dinner, okay?" She paused, noticing Hiro was biting her lip and hanging her head. "…okay?”

Disregarding her favorite food, Hiro pushed back the chair to hug Aunt Cass tightly, unable to put words to the overwhelming amount of love she felt in that moment and the equally overwhelming feeling of being loved in return. “Thank you,” she choked out, embarrassed to find she was on the verge of tears, which she barely forced back. “Um, sorry, I just…”

Aunt Cass pressed a kiss to the top of her head like she had when Hiro was a little girl. “I know.”

When she woke up the next morning to find her mother’s journal on her bedside table, Hiro didn’t even bother trying not to cry, cradling the book close to her chest as happy tears welled up. _She loves me,_ she thought, feeling the way she had when Baymax took her flying, _Aunt Cass loves me for me. She loves me as her **niece**. Coming out didn’t ruin anything. She will always love me just like Tadashi always loved me and my parents loved me._

She fell back asleep like that, curled around the book in her bed, and drifted into the most peaceful sleep she’d ever known.


	4. Video Games

Aunt Cass folded her arms, looking at Hiro with a mixture of annoyance and confusion. 

“Young lady,” she started, and had to bite back a smile at how Hiro perked up at that – one day Cass was going to get Hiro to tell her which professors misgendered her and then she would have _words_ with them – “You know I don’t allow M-rated video games in this household.”

She nodded, fiddling with her fingers, whose nails had been painted red courtesy of Honey Lemon. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m assuming there’s a reason why you went around my back for this.” Another ‘uh-huh’, this one a little softer than the last, and Aunt Cass rolled her eyes. “Would you care to explain?”

Hiro winced. Tadashi used to explain for her in situations like this; there was an absence of his presence in small moments, in unexpected places, that she was still getting used to. After a second, she realized she’d paused for him to jump in and inhaled deeply, pushing past it. “Um, I want to? But I don’t really know how… uh, maybe…” Hiro mumbled the next part, and Aunt Cass noticed her niece wasn’t meeting her eyes.

She placed a hand on Hiro’s shoulder, leaning down. “Say that again, sweetie?”

“Maybe if I loaded up my save file, I could show you,” Hiro volunteered timidly, and when Aunt Cass nodded, she led the way to her room, where her computer sat waiting.

Baymax waddled over with Mochi in his arms, monitoring the situation as best he could. He and Aunt Cass often conferred regarding these things, especially now that there was no Tadashi around to mediate things or help out. While Baymax wasn’t perfect, he was definitely trying to make sure Hiro was happy and that Aunt Cass didn’t binge eat out of stress every day. Hiro nervously loaded up the game, grumbling at the computer reminding her to update something, something that wouldn’t normally bother her, until she got to screen where she could show her character and their stats.

Aunt Cass squinted at the overly stylized font. “…that’s _you_.”

“Well, I mean. She’s a vampire, so. No? But yes.” Hiro glanced back at her aunt, then the screen, then back to her aunt. “I had to mod the game a little to get the customization right.”

She looked at the status page, reading. “She’s like you, just taller.” Ignoring Hiro’s indignant ‘ _hey!_ ’, she pulled her niece into a hug. “Oh, sweetie, you should have told me. But why did you pick this game for it?”

“One, it’s cheap, and I feel guilty hitting up Fred for money for stuff like games. Two, it’s only rated M because there’s lesbians in it, it's not actually violent enough to freak me out like most games. Three, I didn't just want to play a lady, I wanted to play a badass lady. Four, her clothing is what the hashtag 'goals' was made for, and it's fireproof! Totally going to remake the team's armor to be more like that later, it's a solid idea.”

“Language,” her aunt chided at the light swearing, then paused. “Wait, are you telling me they upped the rating _just_ because your female character is with a woman?”

Hiro had the urge to explain the history of LGBT representation in gaming to her, something Tadashi could and would have done had he been there, but Baymax said simply, cutting to the heart of the issue, “The ESRB feels such content may be harmful to minors. I have found no supporting evidence for this claim. My programming would not allow me to let Hiro play this game if it was harmful.”

Cass stared at him, flabbergasted. “That is the single stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Ugh. I need a cupcake. Or a dozen. That is - that's just - ugh!”

Baymax waddled after her as she stormed towards the kitchen. “Your blood sugar levels are currently over the optimal numbers. I would suggest consuming something healthier, such as a bagel.”

“Fine, then I'll make bagels; we were running low on those anyway.” She stopped at the door, looking back. “And Hiro?”

“Yeah?” she replied hesitantly, fidgeting with her nails again, which were the same shade of red as her character’s.

Aunt Cass smiled warmly. “If you want to date a girl, _I_ don’t think that’s harmful. To anyone.”

Hiro grinned back and resumed playing as the smell of baking bagels filled the home.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am agonizing over what name Hiro would choose and if it's in-character so while I overthink this more than I thought through my own name change when I came out as trans, here's something short to tide you over.
> 
> And yeah this is based off an actual game I own that really did get a M rating for this exact reason.


	5. What's In A Name (Part Two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All these Japanese names are real and so are their meanings. I do not intend to mock them, I just feel like Hiro and her mom would probably not like all of them since, well, do YOU like all the names in YOUR culture? Exactly.

* * *

_Naming children is much harder than Fuyuki thinks,_ the first relevant line of Hiro’s mother’s notebook read. Sandwiched between notes on medical terminology and theories on how to make a universally understood version of medical jargon, she’d found a whole section of a page dedicated to impromptu rants. This was common for her mother, usually a place where digressions on life and people went. Thirty one pages in, there was one about her pregnancy with Hiro at long last. 

Fuyuki Hamada was Hiro’s father, named for the snowy winter day of his birth. He was, apparently, not as deeply invested in names as his wife had been. _Tadashi’s name was easy, not just for being Fuyuki’s brother’s name, but it’s got such a great meaning. ‘Positivity’, sure, but also the other kanji options he can pick from when he gets older, too, like ‘correct’ and ‘faith’. I wanted Tadashi to know that optimism is how to bring light to dark times and that I only see having him as a good thing, even if he wasn’t planned. And I want my second baby to know I love them just as much! Fuyuki keeps laughing and saying, ‘I think they’ll know that the second they see you.’ He’s kind of right, but still. I just need my baby to know._

Hiro turned the page, unsurprised when she had to scan a bit for the next passage. Her mother wrote in colored pens, a coded system that allowed for even her digressions to be organized. She wrote about her children in red pen, always. The San Fransokyo night was a bit chilly, rainy, after a long, scalding hot day. Hiro had a window open to let the cool air in, a mug of Honey Lemon’s special ‘tea bomb’ tea next to her. What Honey Lemon had done was make little paint ball sized spheres that, when added to hot water, changed it into tea within seconds. Wasabi had gotten Hiro some name books, which she’d hugged him over, and she’d spent some time spitballing ideas with Fred, who was pretty open about how he’d made a list and whittled it down slowly. Gogo was the unexpectedly sweet one, though, who had sent Hiro home from the lab with a purple umbrella with pink sakura blossom designs on it and a water bottle with red and pink flames on it to replace Hiro’s old, beaten-down one. She drank her tea from it now and smiled a little to herself. Even though her mom wasn’t around, Hiro was sure she’d love the team, from Wasabi’s overthinking things to Honey’s mother-henning to Fred’s slacker-with-a-heart-of-gold persona to Gogo’s practical but personal gestures.

Four pages later, she found a solid block of text from her mom, and resumed reading, sipping her tea. _I’ve been thinking about family names, since I don’t really have much family left. Obviously I can’t use Cassandra. Cass hates it ever since that Greek mythology class in high school. Maybe our parents’ names, though? David is a good name for a boy. Our mother might rise up from the dead and haunt me if I named a little girl Uiyula. Hey, if nothing else those can be the middle name ideas. Halfway done! Now if only Japanese name trends made a half of a half of a half of bit of sense._ Hiro stopped reading to chuckle. A half of a half of a half was one of her mother’s favorite phrases, she’d found through reading her notebook. It had driven Fuyuki right up the wall with how repetitive it was. She always used it anyway. Carefully, Hiro pulled out her own notebook, a small one she’d bought to jot down notes on the fly in, and wrote down ‘Uiyula’ to add to her list of growing name ideas. As far as she knew, she hadn’t heard that name before, so she didn’t write the meaning next to it like she had the other names. Still, it was nice to have something her mom had considered on the list.

_I know the trend lately is T names for boys and A names for girls but Tadashi was the only good boys’ name that hits that criteria. The others are so cringey! Taro is the worst. Who names their son ‘boy’? Takato makes me think of the Spanish word for cat. Taichi is too cutesy and I hate it. And the girls names?! Who names a girl Ai, ‘love’, and doesn’t expect irony to bite them in the ass somehow? Aki and all ten of its’ variants are nice but this kid isn’t due in autumn. I can’t name a summer baby autumn, that’s stupid. I liked Azami up until everybody on Earth decided Asami is better. I spent my whole life yelling at people about how to spell my name, I will not inflict that on my children._

_Fuyuki likes Ginjiro, Kouhei, and Arihiro for a boy. He really likes Hiromi, Yumeko, and Sayomi for a girl. He doesn’t look at meanings, but hey, at least he doesn’t look at trends. I’m vetoing Ginjiro now, though. I am not naming a child after his pet hamster. Everything else is… okay. Nothing really jumps out at me. Cass is less than zero help. She likes everything on the list!_ Ten pages and two weeks later, in angry handwriting: _I AM THIS CLOSE TO NAMING THIS BABY HIRO AND CALLING IT A DAY._ A page after that: _Actually Hiro has about ten meanings, all of which are nice, it’s unisex, and it was in two of Fuyuki’s favorites. Maybe this is a good idea. I’m assuming this kid will hate me for all the Hiro/Hero puns but at least it’s not Taro or Ai, right?_

Hiro set the notebook down, looking at her own notebook, where she’d scribbled down the names her mother had listed. Then she opened up her laptop and began searching for meanings. Her mother was not joking about Ai or Taro, which was horrifying. Apparently there were girls named Hiro, now and then, usually in Japan proper. Hiromi or Hiroko were much more common, though, and most people named Hiro that turned up on different searches were men. It was part of a lot of boy names, she found, forgoing counting after it hit fifty and deciding it wasn’t for her. She didn’t want the girl version of a boy name, she wanted a girl’s name. Yume, Yumeko and Yumemi were all uncomfortable. Naming herself the word for dream or a variation on it felt awkward. She wasn’t dreaming of being a girl, she was one. And Sayomi was the name of the main character in that magical girl show all the middle school nerds of the US loved, so that idea was dead and buried.

Rubbing her temples in frustration, she finished her tea and put in Uiyula into the search bar of one of the name sites she’d become all too acquainted with. No results. She pulled up another one and drew another blank. Frowning, she tried a normal search engine and was surprised to see it led to a website on Native American languages. From there, she followed a trail of links to a vocabulary list for a tribe she hadn’t known even existed at all – how was she even supposed to _say_ Iñupiaq – and found the name not used as a name, but as a noun in a grammar lesson. It was in a demonstration of how words changed meanings upon assuming verb form.

_Uiyula, a noun meaning whirlwind, vortex, or whirlpool, is one of many irregular nouns found within the language that loses its’ nature-related meaning when applied to a person. For instance, uiyulatuq does not mean ‘to whirlwind’ but ‘to be confrontational’. Uiyulipiaktuq does not mean ‘is intensely whirlwinding’; rather, it means ‘is refusing to make peace’ or ‘will not back down’._

The rest of the grammar made her eyes and brain hurt attempting to pronounce or follow any of it. It didn’t matter. She’d keep Hiro as a name, for her parent’s sake, because it was the name they both loved and it was meant well and she loved them, even though she never knew them, even though they never got to know they had a daughter. She wasn’t sure if she wanted it as a middle name or a first name or if she was going to go with Hiromi instead. She wasn’t sure she fit the criteria for a name with the –mi suffix that meant 'beauty' on the end of it. She wasn’t sure she was a Hiromi.

But she was pretty sure she fit the bill for a Uiyula long before she could’ve spelled it.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iñupiaq is a real Native American language. All names in it are gender-neutral - the entire language is agender, with verbs having an agender conjugation, no gendered nouns, etc. The only exceptions are words like sister, brother, mother, father, etc. I subscribe to the headcanon of Hiro being part Native American on his mother's mother's side, though the percentage is obviously low by the time it gets to Cass' generation, hence her looking white/white-passing.
> 
> Uiyula is pronounced you-eh-you-lah and yes, that is its' actual meaning. And yes, that's how you make verbs in Iñupiaq: you add suffixes indicating a thing is being done, plus a suffix for how long/if it's continuing, plus a suffix for past/future tense, and sometimes others. Uiyulasuqtuqanniqsuqtiksraq is a great example of how hard this gets and why Iñupiaq has a reputation as being a fast language. It's not, it's that a whole sentence is one very long word, which sounds fast because there's no pauses between syllables like you're used to.
> 
> ...yes I really did that much overthinking and research for this. I just wanted to be respectful of Iñupiaq culture and the next thing I knew it was noon and I've been up since six in the morning working on this instead of focusing on my Biology final, which I really need to go study for.


End file.
